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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by ForteTuba (talk | contribs) at 20:50, 21 November 2009 (→Pro-researcher bias: new section). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

How to participate in the discussion

♦ I added a section on how to participate above, since I wasn't at WikiSym. For example, where will this policy be discussed/planned? Right here? Could someone in the know please put some brief notes in this section above. Thanks! --R27182818 (talk) 01:21, 3 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is a good question. I imagined that the WikiProject and its talk page would be a good hub for this discussion, but it seems others want to bring it to the talk page of WP:Research. I'm not sure which is the best option at this point. --EpochFail (talk|contribs) 17:24, 3 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
One of the suggestions at Wikisym was delink the redirect from Wikipedia:Research (it currently goes to WikiProject Wikidemia), and have that be the new locus for this. Any thoughts on that? Stu (aeiou)I'm Researching Wikipedia 20:03, 2 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I see. I think I misunderstood that suggestion when it came up. It seems to me that WP:Research would be a good place for proposed policy/guidelines where WikiProject_Research would be more general and could support the creation of a "study approval group" that would manage sampling of editors to ensure that they are not overwhelmed. --EpochFail (talk|contribs) 20:42, 2 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I think the confusion was mine. That sounds like a good idea - keep the project and the policies related, but separate. Stu (aeiou)I'm Researching Wikipedia 17:33, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Should recruitment be opt-in or opt-out?

We discussed this quite a bit at WikiSym. It appears that there is a relatively common practice of allowing users to opt-out of various bot interactions such as putting {{NoAutosign}} on your talk page when you don't want SineBot to automatically sign your comments when you forget. I felt like we all agreed that, if we were to deploy a subject recruitment bot that posts on users' talk pages, this style of opting-out would be appropriate. Editors who would not like to be contacted by the subject recruitment bot would be left alone. No one would be automatically opted-in to any study. Instead, they would only be opted-in to hear about studies. It seems that a minimal amount of harm/annoyance would take place. --EpochFail (talk|contribs) 15:41, 3 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Another note... If we do approach the subject recruitment problem via a new bot, we'll be able to get good feedback from the community during the approval process. --EpochFail (talk|contribs) 15:42, 3 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
♦ I agree -- as a researcher, opt-in would be far less useful than opt-out. But, I think it's a key issue to reach consensus on. --R27182818 (talk) 15:00, 4 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think opt-out is critical, as opt-in only captures users who are knowledgeable enough to know that there is an opt-in mechanism, in addition to the self-selection bias. I also don't think that it would be difficult or controversial, if done the right way. The template that I would suggest working with is Template:Bots, and respecting this template is known as exclusion compliance. Right now, you can specify certain categories of user talk page bot activity to opt out of (afd notices on articles you created, no license notices on images you uploaded, etc). I would suggest adding a category for surveys, and seek the advice and consensus of the bot operators who have dealt with a similar problem. Stu (aeiou)I'm Researching Wikipedia 18:33, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Although I agree that recruitment works better (and samples are also better) with opt-out, avoiding that spammy feeling will be pretty important, lest the bot that posts the requests get shut down. This probably means good rotation of requests between editors and careful rate-limiting. -- 128.84.103.49 (talk) 20:31, 21 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:WikiProject Research vs. Wikipedia:Research as hub for discussion?

A new WikiProject would be able to support discussion and organization with full use of main and talk page and could accommodate a multi-fronted effort (study bot, construction of policy, communication, etc). On the other hand, the last time we tried something similar to this (Wikidemia), it didn't last long. It could be that bringing the discussion to the talk page of WP:Research would be sufficient. Thoughts?--EpochFail (talk|contribs) 17:35, 3 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think WP:Research would be an excellent place to eventually put down the guidelines that the community comes to consensus on, but I find a WikiProject better for discussion, coordination, and deployment purposes than just one talk page. -- PiperNigrum (hail|scan) 19:42, 3 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
♦ You mention several types of effort, but it seems to me that the key problem - no policy - should be the highest priority, and that we should focus on that before worrying about implementation (bots, etc.). Is it easier to work towards consensus with a proposed policy (i.e., WP:Research) and an accompanying talk page? --R27182818 (talk) 15:00, 4 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think the idea was that we could use the bot approval process as a kind of preliminary review/approval mechanism for the proposed WP:Research policy - which would have an accompanying talk page where wording, interpretations, violations, etc would be discussed. I think that would only cover interview/survey/etc canvassing, but that was the bulk of the frustration, right? The WikiProject would stay a more general space for the community of wikiresearchers - initially a staging ground for WP:Research, our main goal at the moment but maybe a revival of WP:Wikidemia later. Am I getting this right? Stu (aeiou)I'm Researching Wikipedia 18:24, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

When do we bring non-researchers into the discussion?

♦ So far it's just academics on this page. --R27182818 (talk) 15:00, 4 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to me that we could do a bit of canvasing of editors who would are likely to be interested in this process. We might want to wait until we decide whether we want to bring the discussion to a new WikiProject or Wikipedia_talk:Research. --EpochFail (talk|contribs) 15:55, 4 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Examples of unmediated interactions

I've copied this list over from the proposal (and added another I found) because I think it's important to catalog examples of interactions between researchers and Wikipedians to show the difficulties encountered by researchers, in terms of both pushback by Wikipedians, as well as researchers inadvertently violating Wikipedia norms; both of which we are trying to address in this WikiProject. -- PiperNigrum (hail|scan) 17:22, 14 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

WP:RESEARCH and Wikipedia:RESEARCH vs. Wikipedia:Research and vs. WP:Research

So it seems that while WP:Research and Wikipedia:Research redirect to Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikidemia, WP:RESEARCH and Wikipedia:RESEARCH redirect to Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia. I think that the lowercaps versions are safe to delink from Wikidemia (after a discussion) and use for research policy. However, I don't think doing the same thing with the all-caps versions would go over well. And that Research page is needed just as much as our Research page, I think. Is it confusing? Is this even an issue? Stu (aeiou)I'm Researching Wikipedia 18:39, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm was not aware of the all-caps (WP:RESEARCH). Is there a generally accepted norm around all-caps article names? I'm curious about the naming scheme if we do have WP:RESEARCH -> Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia and WP:Research be policy about conducting research, will people expect to find these two very different articles behind the similar names? I propose two alternatives actions we could do:
  1. Leave WP:RESEARCH -> Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia and fill policy at WP:Research. Let readers figure it out.
  2. Disambiguate by adding a {{disambig}} page. WP:RESEARCH -> WP:Research and place a disambiguation page there to point people to Wikipedia:Research with Wikipedia and Wikipedia: Researching Wikipedia.
--EPOCHFAIL(talk|work) 18:59, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It appears that WP:RESEARCH originally pointed at WP:OR, and in 2007 was discussed to change that redirect to WP:RES. There currently are about 10 places that link to WP:RESEARCH at the moment (the 11th being this page), so there's not a lot of use of it right now. I'd be in favor of RfD'ing it to point to WP:Research once we've got the policy up and approved, and seeing if there's any objections to it. -- PiperNigrum (hail|scan) 19:06, 16 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Pro-researcher bias

I was asked to comment on the proposal. I did a little editing, although I'm too busy right now to be an active crafter of this policy. My main observation is that right now there's a huge pro-researcher bias in the proposal/project. "Given as much data and users as possible"? That's pretty broad. And there are no statements of how the research should benefit Wikipedia itself or give back either to Wikipedia or the participants as a whole. -- ForteTuba (talk) 20:50, 21 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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